


want the moon

by somanyfeelings



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, It's A Wonderful Life AU, guess what? more second person!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8893759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyfeelings/pseuds/somanyfeelings
Summary: "You've been given a great gift, George. A chance to see what the world would be like without you." - It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
or: how Lena learns that a world where she doesn't exist is not too wonderful after all





	

_ “What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.” _

 

_** (  ** before ** ) ** _

“I don’t want this.”

Saying it is the easy part: life does not befit you the way it does your family. Lex wore confidence with the same ease as a two-button suit, but you— You flitted between the cracks of this world you were forced into, and it tugs at your heart all too painfully still.

The figure—Winn, had he said?—steps closer, just near enough to make you want to lean back, keep clear. He is looking at you like you’re a statue missing a piece, like he is trying to deconstruct you and figure out what is missing and why, _why,_ and you want—need—space.

(You hear your mother’s voice: stop fidgeting. Stand straight. Smile.)

A breath, and you try to force away the stiffness of your shoulders, the clench of your fists. But it’s too much.

It’s all too much, too much, and you find yourself shaking your head, giving in: you step back once, stumble briefly as your heel finds the crack in the cobblestone.

Winn merely blinks. You want him to scream at you: screaming is feeling and life and weight expelled from lungs but this, this is silence, and it wraps itself around your gut, a parasite.

“Come.” _Where_ , you want to ask. _Why, and how, and who are you, and just let me go, can’t you see I want it?_

( _Can’t you see I deserve it?_ )

But you go. You step forward once more and take the offered hand.

Before you blink, snow powders the ground, an offering. A chance.

After you blink, it is gone, and all that is left on the brick beneath your feet is dust.

 

* * *

 

**_ (  _ ** _ before _ **_ ) _ **

It would be easier if there were a moment: good and then bad with something—anything, anything—in between. Sharp, splinters of earth, all burned bridge and faint of heart, but there is nothing. And you have sought it. You have tried.

The weight of the world has been hidden in the left atrium of your heart for as long as you could fathom it, and you have her, you have her, you love her, but three-fourths of a beat of a heart is not enough to _be_ enough. Happiness, that ephemeral beast, slips away like sand through open fingers, and you can reach it in some moments when she’s leaning, back against your shoulder, and smiling. But those moments whisper by—why, you wonder, why—

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** one ** ) ** _

The air feels off. You cannot pinpoint why, cannot tell exactly what is different about this heavy chill versus any other, but you know it is wrong somehow.

The snow seems to fall too slowly, as if dangling by strings from the sky, and it doesn't stick.

You are not sure where Winn is walking, but you remain two steps behind him anyway, a desperate sort of following. He leads you down an unfamiliar path, but the destination— You know this building, these white walls against a city of brick. (It had been a symbol, the LCorp logo. Change, maybe, a white flag. A plea, and for what you still are not sure.)

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** two ** ) ** _

You know something is wrong when you see the gaze of the guard. He stares like you are not the CEO of the company, stares like your walk—all click of heels and forced haughtiness—is foreign to him. It startles you, and you stutter to a stop. 

Winn, still behind you, still here, breathes a quiet chuckle.

“ID, please,” the guard says, and the broken silence freezes you further: lips open, mind blank.

“What?” It’s too brash, too brazen for a woman of your stature. “Excuse me?”

“ID. Or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

All you can think is: Tom. Short for Thomas, of course, but never call him that. Married to Claire. You have sent him—this guard, this man who is staring at you like he has never seen you before in his life of 42 years—a holiday card every year since you became CEO.

When you stammer out a quiet “I’m—I’m Lena Luthor, Tom” it sounds all the world like pleading: remember me, remember me.

He doesn’t. “Lena Luthor? Funny. Trying to get into Luthor Corp by pretending you’re related to Lex. It’s been done before, honey.”

Whatever dignity remains splinters away, piece by piece, with every step you take until you are once again breathing in the chill air of winter. You wipe your brow with one hand and blink back the moisture rimming your eyes. 

“W—What’s happening to me?” Anger, now. Of course, of course: you’re a Luthor, and your blood has always run as hot as Lex’s, as Lillian’s. You feel the desperation pulse, collapse into a black hole of heat and fury and this was inevitable, maybe, this fall. “What did you do to me?”

Winn does not react, and you wonder if you were wrong, if he is the true statue here. (You know you are intimidating; you have to be, to be a CEO, to be a woman. But now you feel entirely too much like a child, red-hot tantrum and lungs seeking air. Do something, you want to scream. Just _do_ something.)

“This is what you wanted.” You look up, not expecting the words.

“What?”

“You wanted out. Of all of it. So this—“ A vague wave at the world, and you follow it, taking in the view you know so well. (The view you do not know at all?) “This is a world without you, Lena Luthor. A world where you do not exist.”

You do not speak, or breathe, or move. (You can’t, your mind supplies. You can’t, not really, not when you don’t exist.) Your lungs ache but fulfilling that wish seems all too selfish now, and there is nothing for you here, none of what you have worked so hard for, none of what you have suffered so long for. 

Time floats by, and eventually: “So— So the company—“

The company, in truth, had not been your first thought, or second, or third, but is the only one that does not fill your throat with an acidic pain. 

“The company is still Luthor Corp, and Lex is CEO. It, well— It specializes in anti-alien machinery: the detection device is on the market, and they are working on neutralization technology. Luthor Corp is spearheading the movement to rid earth of all aliens.” And when Winn shakes his head, looks down, you do not want him to continue. He does. “You were never there to turn the company around, Lena.”

(First: you were wrong. It does hurt, this thought. You stare up the building you know so well and wonder why the white facade suddenly looks like a call to war rather than a surrender.)

(Second: Kara, oh, Kara.)

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** three ** ) ** _

“I need to see them.” The words slip out before you’re conscious of them, and panic flashes across your features a beat later. You do not want to see them, no; but— “I need to.”

If Winn disagrees, he does not say so. Instead, he looks to the side. There: Lex, leaving the building. Lillian, following. 

Seeing them together— It hasn’t happened since Lex was jailed, since that day at the trial when you turned your back and walked away, a two-step of betrayal. You were the only one to leave, but different was never good, not when different sounded too much like alien to the ears of Lex Luthor.

They brush by you, no second glance, no connection, and you know they will never think of you again in this reality.

(Did he think of you in _your_ reality? You do not know which is worse: no, no, he has never thought once, or yes, he remembers you, he loves you. He, for whom affection is synonymous with similarity, loves you.)

 

* * *

 

_**(** before **)**_

Their eyes are all blue, and in the sunlight they shine almost silver. Yours are green, too green with flecks of brown, and it is the first sign you do not belong.

You learn to walk in high heels when you realize you will never reach the height of your mother, and when she never stops looking above you, where your eyes would be if you belonged, you make a promise to yourself: make her notice you. Make her care.

You study mechanical engineering because you love it, love building and calculating and love this chance to separate yourself entirely from the anchor of your last name. You frequently lose track of time, spend hours upon hours in the lab, and the peach-pink ring of goggles left on too long rims your eyes every time. (Cover it up, Lena, that is not becoming of a _Luthor_.)

When you have graduated, you immediately go to business school; anything else is not an option. And when Lex is gone, you take over the company, and you change it, for you can not help it: you were never like them.

(God, but you wanted to be for so long.)

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** before ** )  ** _

Home: her. 

You packed your bags as soon as you were able and tried to leave the Luthor house, the Luthor life, behind. (Funny how you miss them—them, those tormentors. Them, your family.)

Living alone suited you: it was easy. It was _right_ , and judgment came only from within when you would sit working, long past midnight, lit only by the blue-white of the laptop before you.

But Kara, oh—When she reaches to pull the screen shut and grabs you, tugs you gently into bed and implores you to _sleep, Lena, get some sleep_ , you know that the heat of her hand holding you close is more home than any building, any space, is ever going to be.

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** four ** ) ** _

A whisper: “Where is she?” As if voicing it louder will crack this careful facade you are crafting, the _it’s okay, it’s okay_ you are trying to coat yourself in, like that will make it true.

Winn does not speak, but he begins walking. Every bone protests as you move to follow: don’t, don’t. Stop. Pull away, like you’re so used to doing. It’s easier this way, easier to pretend you feel nothing.

(You feel everything. Deeply, like every word said is carved straight onto your ribs and you are running out of space for new scars.)

She is at work. You knew she would be, but you cannot bring yourself to walk there on your own, cannot bring yourself to face the reality that she might be happy here, might be better off. For in truth, it would not startle you: Kara has always shone too bright for this world of dull desperation.

She is typing, gaze focused at the screen before her, insulated against the universe outside. It gives you the chance to stare, take in the features you know so well.

(One: a small scar above her right eyebrow. Two: the way she bites the corner of her lip when she is focused deeply. Three: glasses, slipping down. That nervous tick of pushing them back up.)

She glances up after a minute, stands suddenly. Your heart stutters with hope: she knows you. She _knows_ you. And then: “Can I help you?”

No, you think, but yes, yes. She does not need you; you know that much, but you have always known that much, and it is part of what her _Kara._ She chose you, chose to let you in, and that somehow means more than any love borne from need.

But you— You might not need her either, except for those moments when the sun tips barely over the horizon and the past feels all the world like drowning. But you want her. You want her, and you want to walk into this building and watch her lips slip easily into that smile you know so well, and you want to walk by Tom and have him wish you a pleasant day, and you want it all. You want life.

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** five ** ) ** _

“I have to go back.”

Winn looks up, and you stare back unflinchingly. No more doubt; no, this is confidence now, truly, not the faux-pride that you have carried for so long. 

You are prepared to argue, to defend. You have the words ready, armed on your tongue, but Winn simply smiles.

“Good.”

 

* * *

 

_** (  ** after ** ) ** _

You blink again, and the snow is back, and CatCo is gone, and it all here. All of it, including you.

You take one step, two, and break into a run that is not hindered at all by the crackling cobblestones beneath your feet. Once you are inside, you kick off your heels and take the stairs two at a time, and by the time you have reached the door you are panting, all pink cheeks and wind-mussed hair.

You have a key in your pocket, but you knock anyway, needing her to answer. After a moment, she does, and you all but collapse into her, drop your shoes onto the floor and wrap your arms around her hard. She doesn’t get it, but maybe she doesn’t need to, for she hugs back without a beat of hesitation.

From over her shoulder, you can see LCorp Tower through the window, and though the lights are off and the city darkened with the murk of night, it stands tall, hopeful.

Tomorrow will bring meetings and insults anew, you know. Tomorrow will bring opportunities for failure.

But tomorrow, that giddy chance, will also bring success, and love, and joy, and life, and you can hardly wait.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feedback is greatly appreciated! You can find me @ [ageekmonkey](http://ageekmonkey.tumblr.com) on tumblr!


End file.
